A mother of two sobs as she tells us, "I have no money. No money for books or uniforms to send my children to school." It's around 110 degrees Fahrenheit in this squalid camp in downtown Islamabad, where 2,000 Christians have settled, literally in the middle of the road.

Obama's relationship with Mexico started on shaky ground, although the first foreign leader he met with as president-elect was Mexican President Felipe Calderón. Reports from the Pentagon and the CIA considered that Mexico was at risk of becoming a failed state, something that didn't sit well with the Calderón government.

But the building is mute over the weekend attack in Syria, where it's reported, and widely believed, that U.S. special operations forces launched a helicopter attack from in Iraq five miles across the border into Syrian territory.

I was a summer intern in Illinois at the Chicago Tribune newspaper. An editor dispatched me to City Hall to cover a demonstration. When I arrived, I found a group of angry African-American women shouting at a group of white city officials in a crowded waiting room.

"Do you know the person pictured in the following video," it read. "If so, please contact me immediately. Your life might be in danger." The sender claimed to be a Detective James Nicholas, Director of Crime Prevention for the Universal Crime Network.

These photos marked a dramatic moment as 2 million people lined the railroad tracks from New York to Washington. They came to watch the funeral train carrying the body of Sen. Robert Kennedy, the Democratic presidential candidate who had been assassinated days earlier.

On that morning in January, members of the press corps boarded bulletproof buses for the journey from Jerusalem to Ramallah for Bush's press conference at the former compound of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, which had been bombed by Israeli forces many years ago.

It sounds like a spy movie. But CNN's Dan Rivers, who sneaked into storm-ravaged Myanmar without the knowledge of the nation's secretive ruling junta, says the reality is even more frightening than it appears on the silver screen.

These inmates are kept behind a maze of chain-link fences, topped with barbed wire, and are guarded by heavily armed men in military fatigues who hold shields. We're escorted through Camp Bucca, the United States' biggest detention facility in Iraq, by Marine Gen. Douglas Stone, who runs the camp.

Here's a typical example from early April: "The pope is not coming to get mixed up in the local political process," said Italian Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the pope's ambassador to America, in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter. "His presence is about something more universal and, at the same time, more personal."

But that excitement was leavened with sadness on Friday, because this time I was part of a small group of reporters traveling with the president to Tennessee, one of five states struck by deadly tornadoes this week.

It was breathtaking to watch as tens of thousands of people poured over what once was a towering Israeli-built iron wall, a seemingly insurmountable barrier between Gaza and the world, now a walkway through which Palestinians strolled into Egypt.

Earmarks are those nearly secret pet projects that are added onto the government's spending bills year after year. On Monday night, President Bush will announce what are being called "unprecedented changes" in the way lawmakers earmark money for special projects that benefit their districts or campaign contributors.

But he's trapped inside his security bubble, his every step mapped out in great and precise detail by teams of security experts and handlers. In the end he'll see a side of this unhappy land that bears as much resemblance to reality as Hollywood does to real life.

Now, is it possible that this "highway" mentioned in Chapter 35 is actually Interstate 35 that runs through six U.S. states, from southern Texas to northern Minnesota? Some Christians have faith that is indeed the case.

We'd landed on boulders in the middle of two fast-flowing rivers, in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, just 15 miles from the Pakistan border on September 12. Mountains towered over us, incredibly steep and imposing, on all sides. The sun sets early here.

My son Ricky, who is 17, idolized Sean Taylor during his All-America days at the University of Miami, through his promising early years with the Washington Redskins, and right up until he died from a gunshot wound early Tuesday morning.

Warm feelings toward the United States on the streets of Turkey are in short supply, and the welcome mat is not out for Rice. This week, protesters in Ankara threw darts at a photograph of Rice and held signs that read, "Terrorist Rice, take your bloody hands from Turkey" and "Go home Rice."

He was tanned and rested from a long summer vacation, thrilled to be spending more time with his family and eager to start reaping the greener pastures of the private sector after leaving the White House in July.

Listen to his current album, "Graduation," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, besting 50 Cent's "Curtis" in a much ballyhooed face-off, and you're more likely to hear the sounds of chests being thumped than backs being patted.

The president said the surge of forces in Iraq is succeeding from a security standpoint, though not succeeding enough to forge the political reconciliation that was a primary goal of the increase of troops.

And, of course, it is no surprise why Israel has Khaled Meshaal at the top of its hit list. He is known to have ordered bombings that have targeted Israeli civilians, blowing up cafés, markets and malls across Israel.

But something changed Wednesday, and mine owner Bob Murray told five of us that we could go into the mine as far as we wanted and provide information, video and photographs for all the news media present. This was noteworthy, considering that mines are incredibly difficult places for reporters to get access to, even in normal circumstances.

charges that Judge Steven Leifman says are usually "avoidable felonies." He says the arrests often result from confrontations with police. Mentally ill people often won't do what they're told when police arrive on the scene -- confrontation seems to exacerbate their illness and they become more paranoid, delusional, and less likely to follow directions, according to Leifman.

I see the first lady two sections up chatting casually with her staff, sitting comfortably with her seat facing the back of the plane. There is a clear view of her, and my colleague beside me can't help but take a few pictures during this candid moment.

I first saw her at our stop at the Fann Hospital for HIV/AIDS patients in Dakar, Senegal. She was with her mother, the first lady, getting a tour of the garden that provides the hospital's patients with vegetables.

Potholes. Piles of trash. Dead animals. All places where improvised bombs can be hidden, and almost from the moment we leave base, there is shouting and swerving to avoid things in the road that just don't look right. Or look different from the last time through.

But she insisted the police had sanctioned a face-to-face meeting with Jemaah Islamiyah's military commander, at a secret location somewhere in Java. We scrambled to the airport and less than 24 hours later I found myself nervously pacing up and down an empty, echoing corridor of a police building, waiting for a convoy carrying the most dangerous terrorist in Southeast Asia.

We met the 74-year-old retired priest in a grocery store parking lot in Phoenix. We had some questions, and he isn't the kind of person to grant interviews, at least not on the topic we wanted to talk about: Murder.

The prison has an almost surreal feel. The first floor is well-lit, filled with official offices and a medical room for the inmates. Pasted on the walls are drawings of women and children. In almost each picture, there's one or two teardrops on their faces.

Journalists traveling with the vice president reported that aboard Air Force Two en route to Iraq, someone identified only as a "senior administration official" said Cheney's message to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki would be clear.

These are mostly the same goals that a similar group tried to achieve at a summit in 2004. The final summit communique reached three conclusions: The U.S. presence in Iraq is not open-ended, the Iraqi government needed to do more to include more political parties (i.e. Sunnis) in the political process and more efforts needed to be made to curb the violence.

I remember the British flag being lowered and the Zimbabwean one being raised. To me, it seemed there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd at Rufaru Stadium in the country's newly named capital, Harare, previously known as Salisbury.

Three days in Iowa this week and stops with five presidential candidates showed that even though some are lamenting the 2008 race's early start, the Hawkeye State is basking in the attention from White House hopefuls.

They do not usually let outsiders into their world. And rightly so: they must be able to continue to do their high-risk work behind enemy lines without fear of compromise or capture. Because it's not just downed aircrews the teams go after. They also recover other special targets and go on other missions they can't discuss.

I've been to Gaza more times than I can count, first in 1993, and several dozen times ever since. As one of CNN's Jerusalem-based correspondents, Gaza is my beat. I know almost every inch of the place and, although conditions are often difficult, I enjoy working there.

As a reporter, I've been in parts of Africa that can only be described as Godforsaken, covering stories as varied as famines in Niger, civil wars in devastated regions like Darfur and the victims of civil wars in Uganda and Sierra Leone and mass rapes in the Congo.

This discussion raised a series of questions we decided to explore on our program: Is there an inner racist in many of us, just waiting to explode? And is racism thriving today, just underneath a well-masked surface of political correctness and civility?

When it comes to relations between blacks and whites, it's no surprise to me that we are, in many places, still separated, despite a desire for better relations. African-Americans often live in one neighborhood, whites in another.

Sgt. Joel Heller, Josephine County Sheriff's office, and John James, owner of the Black Bar Lodge -- both had the same exact thought: Why did the Kims continue down such a desolate path when they so clearly did not know where they were going?

But when it comes to stem cell research, Iran is cutting edge. Iran has some of the most liberal laws on stem cell research. Scientists say the clergy here define life as beginning three months after conception, which gives scientists access to human embryonic stem cells left over from fertilization trials.

The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking to huge crowds in a province outside the capital, recently said. "The winning [of Democrats in the U.S. elections] is not solely a domestic event of America. It means the failure of the pro-war and aggressive policies of the present president of America."